g company, and piling up its fires half-chimney high.
Blessings on it, how the Ghost exulted! How it bared its breadth of
breast, and opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring,
with a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything
within its reach! The very lamplighter, who ran on before dotting the
dusky street with specks of light, and who was dressed to spend the
evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as the Spirit passed: though
little kenned the lamplighter that he had any company but Christmas!

And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood upon a
bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast
about, as though it were the burial-place of giants; and water spread
itself wheresoever it listed--or would have done so, but for the frost
that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and furze, and
coarse, rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak
of fiery red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a
sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the
thick gloom of darkest night.

"What place is this?" asked Scrooge.

"A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of the earth,"
returned the Spirit. "But they know me. See!"

A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced
towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a
cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and
woman, with their children and

[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 41.]

[Illustration: Verso of original manuscript Page 42.]

their children's children, and another generation beyond that, all
decked out gaily in their holiday attire. The old man, in a voice that
seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste, was
singing them a Christmas song; it had been a very old song when he was
a boy; and from time to time they all joined in the chorus. So surely
as they raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud;
and so surely as they stopped, his vigour sank again.

The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe, and
passing on above the moor, sped whither? Not to sea? To sea. To
Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a
frightful range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by
the thundering of water, as it rolled, and roared, and raged among the
dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tr